
I don’t consider myself a baseball purist by any stretch, even though I hate the DH more than my brother’s fat pig-faced wife. Don’t even get me started. Aside from being a horrible human being, she’s quite nice. Anyway, Major League Baseball wants to realign how their 30 teams are organized in leagues and divisions. It’s a challenge unique to other sports, since the two primary “conferences,” the National League and American League, don’t play each other for most of the season. Oh, and that whole DH thing doesn’t help either.
Realignment stories are always fun: it’s a great way to act like you care about a sport without knowing any of the players or even the teams. Anyone can just look a map and say, “Yeah, Arizona should play in the AL West.” The owners surely can’t help themselves either, even if the interleague matchups that ensue alter the playoff races
But there’s discussion that realigning teams might make baseball more “fair,” which seems kinda silly, especially when two or three clubs’ massive payrolls dwarf the rest of the league. Plus, how does one reconcile two 15-team leagues, where that 15th team on any given day will be playing The only truly fair way to realign would be to leave the Yankees and Red Sox in the AL and moving the rest of those teams to the NL (and you bet your ass the pitchers are gonna bat). That moan you just heard was the ESPN brass climaxing in unison at the thought.


How anyone could be a fan of NL baseball is beyond me. Watching pitchers get up there and basically waste a slot in the lineup is ridic. Not to mention that the 7 and 8 hitters are usually garbage, too.
Love your site though!
The realignment seems like a forced idea, but I would like to see SF and Oakland in the same division.
Terrible idea and unnecessary, but it will happen.
Also, I like the DH partly because I’m a Yankees fan and partly because it cuts down on the chance of a pitcher getting hurt while at bat or running the bases.
The only part of realignment I’ve heard was a one team shift to fix the problem of AL West having only 4 teams, the NL Central 6 and the rest 5 each (which means whoever set it up is fucking moron). Hadn’t heard anything about it being a wide scale thing although given Selig’s propensity for being a fuck-up, I wouldn’t put it past him.
Brandon probably loves the DH.
I could honestly live with it in the NL, and it will probably happen within the next 10 years.
I would love to see Toronto move to the NL East or to the AL Central. Just as long as they can get the fuck out of the AL East. They’ve had some teams that could have won both divisions, or at least had an easier route to the Wildcard spot. In fact, lets just have the AL East consist of the Yanks and Sox, and let the other teams go to other divisions while they have idiotic 4 hour games.
*Re-reads Burnsy’s post*
Sorry, didn’t realize you already suggested to have the AL East consist of the Sox and Yanks.
It’s going to be either the D-backs or the ‘stros going to the AL West or it’s going to be two leagues with the top 5 teams in the playoffs…
It’s retarded that the Rangers and Mariners are in the same division; Dallas is just about as close to Boston as it is to Seattle. And having BOTH the Astros and Rangers fly up there? Doubly retarded. Just switch the Rangers and the D-Backs, and save some jet fuel.
The problem with a simple alignment shift to fix having four teams in the AL West and 6 in the NL Central (and I’ve read this elsewhere) there is no real way to fix the scheduling problems that occur besides having weekly interleague play, which is awful.
Also, as a Sox fan, I feel the need to point out that the salary discrepancies amongst the top third teams isn’t that great, except for the Yankees. We don’t spend that much more than the Phils or Mets or Cubs. And as we saw when the financials were released, the Pirates of the world could spend more money, but they’re greedy bastages.
I’m afraid of change and feel like this is a terrible idea if it affects the NL or AL East.